In-Flight Entertainment (IFE) systems can be quite complex and require a great deal of infrastructure to provide updated content to passengers on an aircraft. Typically, once a month a media server of an IFE has its content updated by downloading media content to the server for distribution to passengers upon request. The server can then provide media content over a network to passengers via seat back media players.
Quite a bit of effort has been put forth toward providing media content to IFEs. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,404,567 to DePietro et al. titled “Method of Distributing Audio Programming to Passenger Entertainment Systems, and Apparatus”, filed Jul. 16, 1993, describes a distribution system having a central hub which distributes media content to local distribution facilities near or at airports. The local distribution facilities then download data to aircraft media servers. Such approaches are useful for distributing media content aircraft. However, such approaches fail to address numerous issues associated with updating and distributing media content among IFE elements (e.g., media players, servers, etc.) in a cabin of a vehicle. For example, should a network connection break between players and a content server, a passenger would lose access to their media content.
U.S. patent application 2006/0031748 to Brady et al. titled “System and Method for Loading Content in an In-Flight Entertainment System”, filed May 27, 2005, describes an IFE where a portable data load can be used to provide media content to an aircraft content server. Although Brady provides a better approach for delivering content to elements of an IFE, Brady fails to address issues relating to maintaining access to content should a media network or element fail within the IFE system.
Other examples of approaches for distributing content throughout an IFE ecosystem include:                U.S. patent application publication 2006/0107295 to Margis et al. titled “Portable Media Device and Method for Presenting Viewing Content During Travel” filed on Jun. 15, 2005, discusses the use of portable media devices within passenger entertainment systems.        International patent application publication WO 2004/008277 to Rogerson titled “Modular Entertainment System Configured for Multiple Broadband Content Delivery Incorporating a Distributed Server” filed Jul. 11, 2003, describes an IFE system where each node in the system can distribute content among other nodes without requiring a centralized distribution network.        
These and other known art provide for updating content in an IFE by downloading content to a server and then distributing the updated content among the devices in the system. Interestingly, the various elements in the known systems use different modalities for storing content on the different devices. For example, a head unit media server might use a hard drive, RAID array, or DVD while the media players might lack a content storage medium or might utilize a different medium than the server. It has yet to be appreciated that allowing nearly all, if not all, elements in an IFE system to use the same modality for storing content could solve many issues. Using a common type of storage unit, or storage units have the same form factor, that stores a complete set of media content allows for quickly updating content within an IFE and renders the IFE system robust against many points of failure at a fine level of granularity. If any one device or network connection fails, all other devices still have access to the complete content set through their installed storage unit. Furthermore, spare media players can be easily updated at the same time a head unit media server is updated by replacing one or more the spare's storage unit in the field. In environment where each set of storage unit stores the same content set, unskilled individuals can easily update content by installing any individual storage unit into any receiving device.
Thus, there is still a need for vehicular entertainment systems where the elements of the system can access content from a common content storage unit.